Top West End ticket prices rise, cheaper tix fall

The West End has seen its top-end ticket prices jump up by nearly a fifth over the past year, while its cheapest tickets are down almost 10 per cent, according to The Stage’s annual ticketing survey.

Across all West End shows, including musicals and plays, the average top-priced seat is £117.52, an increase of 10 per cent when compared with 2017.

The 2018 figures marks the first year that prices have exceeded £100 since The Stage, a British weekly newspaper and website covering the entertainment industry, and particularly theatre, started surveying in 2012.

The survey, which is now in its seventh year, provides a yearly look at West End tickets, covering the commercial sector as well as subsidised and not-for-profit theatres.

Musicals saw an average increase of 21 per cent on its top-priced tickets, a jump from £127 in 2017 to £153.54.

Hamilton has overtaken The Book of Mormon as the most expensive seat across the entire West End, with its top tickets sitting at £250. It marks the first time in six years that the Book of Mormon has fallen from the top spot as the dearest.

The Stage reports, however, that a spokeswoman for the musical said that more than 81 per cent of tickets for the show were priced at £100 or less, including £10 daily lottery tickets, “making the production more inclusive and available to wider audiences”.

Meanwhile, the play with most expensive tickets is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which will set fans back £175 for one of the two parts.

The Stage notes that producers claimed the expensive tickets allowed them to subsidise “a great number of accessibly priced seats”, with more than 300 tickets priced at £20 or less.

Across the West End, its cheapest tier tickets have remained consistent over the seven years of surveying. Though in 2018, the average lowest priced ticket was £19.31, a decrease of 9.7 per cent from 2017.